


What's In A Name

by icewhisper



Series: What's In A Name [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, M/M, aka the prequel to my len's-mom-was-a-time-master au that i talked about months ago, but you could read this one as gen if you want, no actual slash but it's a thing in the already-existing sequel so, which is fixed in part two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 11:12:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19317028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: Her mother handed her off to strangers.





	What's In A Name

**Author's Note:**

> On my birthday, you're all getting the present of a fic I forgot I never posted.

Her mother handed her off to strangers.

“You’ll protect her?” she asked through her sobs. “You’ll keep her safe?”

One man put a heavy hand on her shoulder to keep her still, but she shook it off and ran back into her mother’s arms. It didn’t matter what the men in the odd robes said. They weren’t her mother. They didn’t fit in her land or in her home with their heavy boots crunching under the dried grass or with the strange weapons strapped to their hips.

They were soldiers of an army she didn’t know, but her heart told her it was a fight she wanted no part in.

She clung to her mother’s tattered apron, face hidden in her belly, and begged to stay. “I’ll behave,” she promised. “I will.” But even as young as she was, she knew it would do no good. War was breaking out. Her father and her brother had left a year ago with letters stopping soon after. They weren’t coming home. She was all her mother had left. Even if the fighting was creeping closer and closer to their little hut, she couldn’t leave her.

Her mother knelt in front of her, long fingers brushing back her curls. Both their cheeks were wet. “You be a good girl,” she told her, firm despite her tears. “You’ll do amazing things, but you can’t do that here.” She let out a breath, shaky and heartbroken, and leaned in to kiss her forehead. “I love you, Isabis,” she said as her voice broke, “with all my heart.”

The men took her away that day, hands grasping her shoulders, but they couldn’t stop her from looking back. She watched her mother collapse back to her knees, arms wrapped around herself, and she could hear the sound of the sobs. They matched her own, her broken voice screaming _MAMA_ into the hot summer air.

Her mother didn’t come.

One man lifted her up into his arms and ignored the way she fought him.

She cried for her mother long after their hut had faded from view and her mother’s cries were lost in the breeze.

 

 

For the rest of her life, she’d say Isabis died the day the men tore her from her mother’s arms. Her heart was left behind with a woman she’d never see again and her soul torn into pieces.

They left her at a house that was as scary as it was extravagant. Children ran around as a stern woman watched them. They spoke in tongues she didn’t understand, but she hadn’t understood the men either. Their voices had spoken her language, but their mouths hadn’t shaped the words. It wasn’t right. They weren’t right. None of this was right.

She cried that night, curled up in the corner instead of the soft bed she’d been given, and ached for the comforting warmth of her mother’s arms, for the steady thrum of her heartbeat under her ear. The girl in the second bed watched her with wary eyes, but she didn’t try to comfort her. No one tried to comfort her. They left her unnamed, because no one cared to say her name properly. Most days, she thought it was for the best, that she may lose herself, but that Isabis could stay with her mother. It may only be in memory and one worn, hand-sewn doll, but she wanted that part of her to stay protected and safe from the world she’d been pulled into.

 

 

She sang songs when she was alone, hidden away from her caretaker and the other children, and tried to hold onto who she was.

The day she realized she couldn’t remember the last verse in her old lullaby, she cried until she threw up.

 

 

They showed her the world from beginning to end, teaching lessons about time and preserving timelines they had no business touching at all. They spoke with authority, like it was their right to meddle in affairs like gods. It sickened her. Fixing time could hurt it as much as save it, even in the right hands, and she didn’t think they were the right hands at all.

Still, she sat through the lessons, bit her tongue until she tasted copper, and smiled like she was supposed to. She could fake it, she told herself. She’d been faking it ever since she’d arrived at the Refuge.

People came one day when she was nearly sixteen, adults and children, and she could feel herself being watched. It was a man, taller than her, but with eyes that seemed to shift between blue and green without ever quite deciding on one. He looked at her like something hurt deep inside and she cast him a nervous smile.

“Be careful with that one,” he warned her when she moved towards the bassinets and peered down at the pale-skinned baby wrapped in blue. “He’s trouble.”

The baby — as if it knew they were talking about him — burst into tears, tiny fists pulled free from his blankets. She scooped him up, swaying gently as she hummed her old lullaby under her breath. She’d learned English on her own as she got older, but her mother tongue came back to her like it had never left. The words sounded like nonsense to the child, but he started to calm, cries downgraded to whimpers, and she smiled, even as she stumbled to a clumsy end before the last verse.

The man behind her picked it up, his voice barely above a whisper. It sounded more like talking than singing and his pronunciation was off, but it lit up something in her memory. They finished the lullaby together as the baby drifted back to sleep and she looked back at him, bewildered. “Where did you learn that?”

His jaw tightened and he pushed himself up from the chair. “Someone I knew.” It was an answer as much as it wasn’t, but she saw the sadness in his eyes. A loved one, she thought. Someone he’d lost.

Her face softened. “I’m sorry.”

She meant to offer to teach him the song properly, to give him the song the way it was meant to be sung, but he and his friends left before she could.

She never saw him again. He wasn’t with the others when they returned for the children they’d left behind, but the burly man with the shaved head held the pale-skinned baby to his chest like the child itself was a gift.

“He’s gone,” she said cautiously, “isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” She came up on his side and adjusted the baby’s hat before it could fall off. “What was his name? He… People need to be remembered.”

Green eyes fell shut and his hold on the newborn tightened. “Leonard,” he said finally, but something in his voice sounded broken.

She laid a hand on his arm, a sad smile on her lips. “It’s a nice name,” she told him, but she could never explain that she understood. Names had held a special significance to her since Isabis was left behind with her mother. Adah rose in her place, a careful mix of home and faith. The Time Masters would never allow for that kind of sentimentality, so she kept her mouth shut. “He’ll be remembered,” she promised and ran a fingertip down little Leonard’s cheek.

 

 

Adah Cohen became Adah Snart when she was twenty-one, wife of Lewis and the woman with a fake past and a time ship hidden in the back yard.

At twenty-two, she added Mom to her list of names when the doctors helped her birth a baby boy. A nurse held her hand. Lewis wasn’t there.

They laid him in her arms after, tiny body wrapped up in a dark blue blanket that sparked memories of the Refuge and people that didn’t come back. She breathed Leonard’s name as her heart broke. Her little boy, snatched away and returned, but his older self lost along the way.

She pressed quivering lips to his forehead, because she’d gotten to see him grown. She’d seen her boy with salt and pepper hair and enough memories of her to return a lullaby she’d forgotten. Memories, she knew, because the look he’d given her back at that house had said all it needed to. It spoke of loss and the same longing ache she felt when she thought about her own mother.

She wondered how long she had before he lost her.

The End


End file.
